Michael Natkin Archives

Michael Natkin's Herbivoracious When I’m nestled all snug in my bed visions of, well, it depends on what I’m reading, dance in my head. I, like many of you out there, read cookbooks like novels, carefully looking over every page and detail like a major plot point or character development, deciding what’s worthy of making and hopefully finding something new to try. I’ve got six books here for you to throw on a kerchief or cap and read while waiting for St. Nick, or any other time of year. I’m also a little late in the game for Amazon ordering, so I hope you make your way to your favorite local bookstore and find them all.

First up, two vegetarian books that I’ve fallen in love with. Anyone who knows me or reads this site regularly knows that it’d be a pretty mean feat for me love a book not about meat (and there are two below that are almost all meat). If you’re looking to get a little healthier in the coming year, and maybe help the planet too, I highly recommend Michael Natkin’s Herbivoracious and Kim O’Donnel’s The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations.

The subtitle on Herbivoracious is “a flavor revolution” and that’s no understatement. Natkin’s book came out earlier this year and I’ve cooked many items out of it, especially during the summer and fall, but that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of year-round vegetarian dishes in it. Even if you’re already a regular reader of his Herbivoracious site the book has many dishes not on the site. Natkin does one of the best jobs of giving the home cook vegetarian dishes that aren’t elaborate, but definitely step up the game from sides to entrées.

Kim O'Donnel's The Meat Lover's Meatless Celebrations

Speaking of sides and entrées, The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations has the best of both worlds when putting together full-on vegetarian dinner parties for holidays, special events and just plain big meals with family and friends. When I got the book I tried O’Donnel’s Eggplant Timpano and while mine didn’t look quite as beautiful as hers (it’s almost a pie in it’s appearance), it was fantastic. Pairing that up with the rest of the meal dishes would be a great feast.

Many of the dishes in both these vegetarian books are gluten-free and vegan too and are labelled as such. I had the pleasure of meeting both these authors recently and of course they’re both very passionate about their subject. I got to sample a couple of O’Donnel’s dishes including a Quinoa-Walnut Brownie that you would’ve never known was gluten-free. Natkin and I met over a cup of coffee and we recorded a brief interview.

The Fisherman's Table by Laura Blackwell

While we’re talking vegetarian and big, bold flavors I want to share some news that my friend at the local Whole Foods Market passed along. It’s not a local product, but it supposed to be available only in the New England area: fresh truffles. Whole Foods Market “is now offering fresh Italian truffles (black, burgundy and white), by special order only. These rare, highly prized fresh seasonal truffles are flown in overnight from Italy, by request only. This offer is valid in New England area stores only. Customers will have the option to order White Alba Truffles, Black Perigord, or Black Burgundy.” If you’re looking for something extra special for that holiday meal, truffles definitely fit that bill.

Before we get to meat (and one of my favorite books of the year, if not of all time—I mean it!) I want to make sure Rhode Islanders know about a very cool locally produced book The Fisherman’s Table by Laura Blackwell. Blackwell has put together a book revolving around seafood caught in the waters around Newport and has contributions from the Fisherman of Newport in her book. It’s a great general seafood manual as well as a book of recipes and if you’re buying local seafood—as you should definitely be doing—it’s a wonderful resource, drawing on some Rhode Island seafood traditions as well as exploring some out-of-area flavors. Make sure you check out www.FishermansTable.com where you can buy the book if you can’t find it in a store.

Fire In My Belly by Kevin Gillespie with David Joachim Also near and dear to my heart is southern cooking, it’s some of the first food that I learned to make when I became interested in cooking and it’s where I learned a lot of what I do today. I have a lot of southern cookbooks, probably more than any other general topic and I love to just grab one every now and then to remind me of something I’m missing. Fire In My Belly by Kevin Gillespie with David Joachim has become one of those books on my shelf. Any book that gives me a new idea for grits, a mainstay and staple of our home, will be a beloved book by me. So here’s to Gillespie’s Overnight Grits and so many of my other favorite things to eat. I look forward to trying his One-Pot Hog Supper that caught my eye as I flipped through. Buy the book and see what I’m talking about.

On to the meat and first up is a book from last year that I didn’t get a copy of until this summer after I met Joshua and Jessica Applestone, owners of Fleisher’s Grass-Fed & Organic Meats in Kingston, New York. Their book, The Butcher’s Guide to Well-Raised Meat by the Applestones and Alexandra Zissu, is an excellent resource guide, memoir and reference book. It’s very to-the-point while at the same time taking some space to explain what it is they do at Fleisher’s butcher shop and, more importantly, why.

The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat by Joshua and Jessica Applestone and Alexandra Zissu The great majority of the meat I eat, if not all of it in the case of beef, comes from Blackbird Farm in Smithfield, R.I., a farm that perfectly matches the list in the book of what the Applestones expect from their farmers. So naturally I agree with their writing. The book is a great educational tool and it’s written in a very consumer friendly, approachable style. I’ll be recommending it in my cooking classes to people who want to learn more. Also, while the black+white photos are very nice to make it a concise and price-friendly book, the color inserts of Jennifer May’s photographs are beautiful.

Finally, my favorite book this year and I was serious when I said one of my favorites of all time, Wicked Good Barbecue by Andy Husbands and Chris Hart with Andrea Pyenson. I’ve got a lot of barbecue books, almost as many as southern cuisine books–they overlap a lot as well. When I got this book my first reaction was not dissimilar from the press release that came with it, how good can a barbecue book by two guys from Boston be? Then I started to read through it and almost every page piqued my curiosity. Everything sounded amazing. But, unlike a lot of other more forgiving cooking methods, barbecue recipes and technique may sound good on paper, but fall apart in practice. That may sound odd, isn’t a slow cooking, heavy seasoning cooking method pretty forgiving? Not if you want to achieve perfect barbecue.

Wicked Good Barbecue by Andy Husbands and Chris Hart with Andrea Pyenson I’ve now cooked my way through a good chunk of Wicked Good Barbecue. This book contains some darn perfect barbecue. Some of these recipes and processes are challenging. Not impossible at home by any means, but very time-consuming and having multiple-components. They’re all worth it. There are techniques in here that mirror some of my own that I know took me years to perfect. Husbands and Hart lay it all out for you. A recipe may take four days, but it’s worth it and I can only imagine the number of days it took them to get it there. Husbands and Hart were the 2009 Grand Champions of the Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue, along with winners of many other barbecue competition awards, and they’ve included that pork spare rib recipe here.

I love my cookbooks. I keep them in relatively great condition, especially considering how often I read through many of them. Wicked Good Barbecue is one of the few books that is completely beat up, and I’ve only had it for about eight months. There’s even sauce and spice rub on some of the pages, which kind of bums me out because some of it is on Ken Goodman’s gorgeous photography. But that’s my testimony. This book is not for the casual weekend barbecue, though there are certainly quick and easy recipes in it. This book is deep and wonderful and I may never find another barbecue book I love as much. Get this book and you may feel the same.

Michael Natkin's Herbivoracious When Michael Natkin was on a book tour for Herbivoracious, a book that expands upon his site of the same name, he took some time to talk with Eat Drink RI about his background and why vegetarian food. You can read a capsule review of Herbivoracious here.

Eat Drink RI: What was your path to becoming vegetarian?

Michael Natkin: I started cooking about thirty years ago, about the same time that I became a vegetarian. It was a combination of things [that made me decide]. I had a girlfriend at the time who was a vegetarian. I wanted to impress her and learned a few dishes and everything. The real sad part is that my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. So she tried a macrobiotic diet and I wanted to help her out so I learned to cook for her.

Literally I went overnight from eating at McDonald’s every day after school with my buddies to, oh look I’m a vegetarian. Seriously, I haven’t had a bite of meat in thirty years except for the times that someone’s given me something and I didn’t realize what I had in my hand. No fish either. I eat eggs and dairy. I’m not vegan.

I’ve been cooking really passionately since then. I lived at Greenbelt Farm in Marin County for a few months during college, when I took some time off. I really liked the whole communal living, cooking for each other deal. I was able to pick vegetables on the farm, take them in the kitchen and cook them for dinner. Very locavore, but thirty years ago, very mind-blowing stuff.

EDRI: This lead to the web site?

MN: I went back into technology [what he went to school for]. I worked at ILM and worked on “Terminator 2” and “Jurassic Park.” I made Terminators melt and dinosaur’s skin wiggle and all that kind of stuff. I worked on computer graphics. I worked at Adobe on After Effects for the last twelve years. During all that time I kept trying to push the passion for my food. Can it just be a hobby? But it kept fighting it’s way back.

So I took a few months off from Adobe and worked at Cafe Flora, which is a famous vegetarian restaurant in Seattle, and a really great place to get my feet wet in a commercial kitchen. The food is really nice, it’s a big place, it’s fast moving and I was able to get on the line right away. I ran the salad station in the first couple of days. I was there for four months so by the time I was done I had done every possible prep task and worked the pizza station, worked the hot line, pretty much do everything in the kitchen and also get to see how ordering works, how staff management was, how to work with waiters. I kind of got the whole picture there, which was amazing.

I went back to Adobe. Then took some more time to stage at Dirt Candy in New York City. It’s a fantastic restaurant. Amanda Cohen was super generous to let me work with her for a few days. I also staged at Canlis in Seattle. It was my first chance to work in a white table cloth, fine dining environment. I really admire that kind of work, that kind of precision, especially in the plating and the attention to detail. It’s really cool to see a few different kitchens and how different chefs go about things and I try to incorporate a lot of their ideas in my own work.

EDRI: How did the book come about?

MN: The blog had been this product of frustration saying, O.K. well I’m not ready to jump into the restaurant world yet. I’ve got a little kid and can’t be up all night. I’ve got a family life and all that stuff which is definitely my top priority. So I was doing the blog and building these relationships with people in the food world, finding a lot of interest in the recipes and lots of great comments and seeing readership go up over time.A few years ago, Harvard Common Press reached out to me to do the book. I was terribly flattered because I love cookbooks. I read them the way people read novels. It’s been a lifelong dream to have one.

EDRI: So the process took a while?

MN: I spent two years developing the recipes for it, photographing them, beta testing them. With my background in software development we always beta tested our software. So I reached out to people to get feedback. I got something like 250 reviews back which was really helpful. You get a different kind of cross-section then if you were to hand them off to a professional recipe developer. You don’t get the technical parts [worked on], but my editors were incredible for that. But having real world people testers was incredible because you find out, “wow, that’s just too complicated for me to do in my home kitchen” or “my family just won’t eat that kind of thing.” All that kind of stuff.

EDRI: I feel like there’s been a surge of vegetarian cookbooks lately.

MN: I think it’s cool that there’s a lot of interest in vegetarian and maybe a few of us are the vanguard of looking at vegetarian in a different way. Being able to say it’s not about health food. It’s not going to be all brown and beige and it’s not just a free-for-all. So much vegetarian food in the past was we’re going to have some Thai food and Italian food on the plate. Or you’re just going to get a lot of side dishes, potatoes and steamed broccoli. What I’ve seen lately at a lot restaurants, which is kind of disappointing to me, we’ve moved the vegetarian entree past the veggie burger, but you’re going to get a pasta in a beurre blanc. Which is fine, but after you’ve eaten like the tenth one, it’s enough.

EDRI: What’s your main message?

MN: Definitely my message is there are beautiful vegetarian dishes from all over the world where people have figured out how to make really hearty, delicious entrees that have flavor. They’re sweet, they’re salty, they’re umami, they have all the different components that make a dish exciting. That’s how I look at things. I try to make culinary good sense. You can use the whole range of culinary technique too. I look at the ideas from Nathan Myrvold and Grant Achatz type work and see where I can incorporate them.

EDRI: Do you think about meat-eaters?

MN: People almost look at vegetarian vs. new ethical ways of eating meat as opposed to each other. I think it’s almost the opposite. I think they really go together. If you’re going to eat meat, by all means eat the best, most ethical sourced stuff you can and then eat vegetarian the rest of the time and let me help you sort out how to do that.

EDRI: Do you find particular world cuisines work better for you?

MN: There’s a difference between what you can cook at home and what you can find in a restaurant. So many cultures have dishes that may involve meat but it’s so easy to adapt them. I think almost anything other than the standard American diet is pretty friendly to vegetarian. Italian is great. Mexican cuisine is amazingly easy for vegetarian. I really love those smoky flavors and I’ve done a lot of work to try and figure out how to get that back into vegetarian food.

EDRI: What’s next?

MN: I’ve got this idea to take the blog into the physical world. I want to open a test kitchen which would allow me to be a lot more productive as a recipe tester, and then open up a prix fixe lunch for like a dozen people a few days a week. So I’ll be able to test recipes and you can come in and get to eat what I made. There won’t be a menu. I’ll just make a set three course meal.

Natkin recently took a position with Seattle-based ChefSteps, a culinary teaching start-up from some of the alumni of Modernist Cuisine. Read what he wrote about his role there, and congratulations to him on what sounds like a very exciting opportunity.

Michael Natkin

2012 Gift Guides: Recommended Reading (and some truffles)

Interview with Michael Natkin, author of Herbivoracious